Oh, you misunderstand. IT is an impediment to many control engineers. It's the automation techs and engineers that will work around the IT department if IT can't supply solutions. One of the more common ones being hide an AP or like in the article, use teamviewer or other remote access software. Then just share a common credential because nobody wants to actually pay for teamviewer.

Businesses need lower cost because they are under price pressure. Especially with small utilities. Remote access is one of those ways to lower their costs on personnel or vendor support.

There is still a whole lot of low hanging fruit in automation for improving security and access control. We're not going to get it from Rockwell for sure though.